ory. However, Jane is young still, and time and
change are at work with her. We all have our sorrows, but I do not believe
very much in the existence of sorrows that never heal.

II.

THE CONE.

The night was hot and overcast, the sky red-rimmed with the lingering
sunset of midsummer. They sat at the open window, trying to fancy the air
was fresher there. The trees and shrubs of the garden stood stiff and
dark; beyond in the roadway a gas-lamp burnt, bright orange against the
hazy blue of the evening. Farther were the three lights of the railway
signal against the lowering sky. The man and woman spoke to one another in
low tones.

"He does not suspect?" said the man, a little nervously.

"Not he," she said peevishly, as though that too irritated her. "He
thinks of nothing but the works and the prices of fuel. He has no
imagination, no poetry."

"None of these men of iron have," he said sententiously. "They have no
hearts."

"_He_ has not," she said. She turned her discontented face towards
the window. The distant sound of a roaring and rushing drew nearer and
grew in volume; the house quivered; one heard the metallic rattle of the
tender. As the train passed, there was a glare of light above the cutting
and a driving tumult of smoke; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight black oblongs--eight trucks--passed across the dim grey of the
embankment, and were suddenly extinguished one by one in the throat of the
tunnel, which, with the last, seemed to swallow down train, smoke, and
sound in one abrupt gulp.

"This country was all fresh and beautiful once," he said; "and now--it is
Gehenna. Down that way--nothing but pot-banks and chimneys belching fire
and dust into the face of heaven...But what does it matter? An end comes,
an end to all this cruelty..._To-morrow."_ He spoke the last word in
a whisper.

"_To-morrow,"_ she said, speaking in a whisper too, and still staring
out of the window.

"Dear!" he said, putting his hand on hers.

She turned with a start, and their eyes searched one another's. Hers
softened to his gaze. "My dear one!" she said, and then: "It seems so
strange--that you should have come into my life like this--to open--" She
paused.

"To open?" he said.

"All this wonderful world"--she hesitated, and spoke still more softly--
"this world of _love_ to me."

Then suddenly the door clicked and closed. They turned their heads, and he
started violently back. In the shado